) /'iJij _ì., ' 0, _ _ .{f'-;;; o \.-=-, 'i : -__: I $< " - - I J..,...V - r -{ \ _ ,. - . , f -.:: ,"J_.' , /. , , -!" t )I ., - -- .......... - - .-.,.-.; -# , "',' þ - .. - -- ----- - .. "-:.. \ _ --= - :7 - . --= -- :;;::: :: ,/ ).... __ c--c:..... - -- ,- , ," .' __ C!' . C -=-- .-:: " ;- _-:.. :-: - :;;;:= ..- ::=""J - _ ; --. _ _ .-!-: _ r '0 ... '''" -,..;:..........-::- -.... . --- -- -" --,- - ':::::.-"' '" - ---- ..... __ _ = _ T I _-;.- . .._ --" ,., -=-- L _ . -, - - .- .. -- I oo:JJ TI 1 ë! " ..... ::--. 1 ..' .;, 't; 'Y. I' · I .f . .::.. --... -:..." "Vanessa has done a not bad de Kooning. " . changed over time. Two good examples are Susan Haskins's "Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor" (1993) and Kath- erine Jansen's "The Making of the Mag- dalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages" (2001). Ac- cording to these writers, it was partly be- cause urbanization in the twelfth cen- tury caused a rise in prostitution that the Magdalene, that well-known whore, be- came so prominent at this time. Preach- ers stressed-indeed, invented-her way- ward youth. She was beautiful, they said, with masses of red-gold hair, and she was an heiress; she lived in a casde. But she had no male relative to arrange a suitable marriage for her, and so she abandoned herself to luxuria, or lust. Day by day, she sat at her mirror, applying cosmetics and perfumes, the better to ensnare innocent young men. Soon, according to the medi- eval preachers (who apparendy regarded wealth as no deterrent to prostitution), she began to sell her body-a lesson, they declared, to all young women tempted by luxuria. Jansen quotes a thirteenth- century friar who put himselfin the mind of such a girl, sitting before her looking glass: "She pulls her dress to one side to reveal bare skin, loosens her sash to reveal her cleavage. Her body is still home, but in God's eyes she is already in a brothel." . Preaching was only part of the campaign. All across Europe, institutions were set up, under the aegis of Mary Magdalene, for prostitutes willing to repent their ways. While she was being held up as a warning, however, the young Magdalene was also an object of admiration. She was chosen as the patron saint not just of barrelmakers and gardeners but also of glovemakers, perfume manufacturers, and hairdressers-in other words, the purveyors of all those fripperies which led her to her fall. (She also became the patroness of prostitutes. In Beaucaire, on her saint's day, the local whores ran a race in her honor.) Apart from her beauty, what appealed to people was her reputed emotionalism. In medieval rep- resentations of the Crucifixion and the Deposition, the Magdalene typically ap- pears mad with grief: Often, her mouth is open; she is screaming. Her hair flies; her cloak flies. She kisses Christ's bleed- ing feet. She knows that it is for her sins, too, that Christ has died. Compared with her, the Virgin is usually far more composed. The period between the elev- enth and thirteenth centuries was the high tide of the worship of the Virgin Mary. According to Marina Warner, all the human failings that were removed from the Virgin were displaced onto the 144 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 13 & 20, 2006 Magdalene, and each cult grew thereby. But, when it came to guilt over one's tres- passes, the Magdalene, not the stain- less Virgin, was the saint people needed. As Haskins puts it, she was "a model for mere mortals who could sin and sin again, and yet through repentance still hope to reach heaven." This shifting image of the Magda- lene-sometimes a pinup, sometimes a sermon-stabilized in the Renaissance. As the great scholar Mario Praz put it, she became a "Venus in sackcloth." In a painting by Titian from 1530-35, we see her, in her grotto, gazing up to Heaven. At the same time, between the strands of her flowing hair, we see the pearly breasts that in her life-as in all lives, Titian is saying, complicitly-were the cause of sin. But the equipoise held only briefly. In the sixteenth century came the Protestants' challenge to the sacra- ment of penance, which, through the sale of indulgences, had been so abused by the Church. The Counter-Reformation therefore placed strong emphasis on pen- ance, and as part of that cleanup cam- paign we get notably chaste images of the Magdalene, such as Georges de La Tour's famous series, with the pious saint now fully clothed and with a skull by her side-a reminder of how beauty ends up. The Magdalene also figured heavily in the devotional poetry of the English seventeenth century. Richard Crashaw's "Saint Mary Magdalene, or The Weeper" (1646) pictures Christ "followed by two faithful fountains" -the Magdalene's two eyes-"two walking baths; two weep- ing motions; I Portable, and compendi- ous oceans." This poem, together with other, like-minded representations, was sufficient to establish the word "maudlin," a derivative of Magdalene, in the English language, with the meaning of "mawkishly lachrymose." With the Enlightenment, Mary Magdalene, like other holy matters, suf- fered some neglect. But in nineteenth- century England she was again invoked by reformers, for prostitution was ep- idemic in Victorian London. More convents were established for rescued prostitutes in the Magdalene's name. (Actually, as Haskins explains, they were halfway houses, where the girls did needlework while awaiting a mod- est marriage or a job in a shop.) The very word "magdalen" was widely used